Ocellaris clownfish: wild or tank bred?

[Winwood]

It is likely because most captive bred ocellaris you find these days are from local hobby breeders or from breeders in the origin countries. Whatever clownfish comes from ORA is almost always feeder fish quality (maybe not even that since they may also carry diseases)

Could very well be. There are two species I regularly see that I am impressed with. 1 is ocellaris and the other is bicinctus. My only complaint with bicinctus is the color. Almost always bicinctus turn that ugly brown color the older they get. That may be more a function of the species though.

 

[ThRoewer]

Some of the other commercial breeders are not too bad - ORA is really the one to stand out in a bad way.

 

[Winwood]

I know a little shop I used to work at had a guy who bred local clowns and I was really impressed with his stuff. The regular ocellaris looked like wild clowns to me. I also see decent fish at my local Petco, which I believe get all their clowns from Sustainable Aquatics. I still see a lot of deformities in designer clown types and Darwin occellaris however. Of course some deformities are now considered desired traits these days, so I guess the issue has become quite muddy.

 

[Protoavis]

Unless you're breeding them there's no reason at all to wild caught and even then the argument for genetic diversity is kind of stretching things given how successful people have been with breeding for as a fair while now

 

[OrionN]

I am looking for nice clowns. Lately I am having problem with finding tank raised clowns with great shape. Last 4 clowns I bought two were tank raised and two were wild caught.
Before this last purchase, all my clowns for the last 15 years have always been tank raised.

I totally agree with D-Nak and ThRoewer regarding the quality of tank raised clowns these days.

 

[ThRoewer]

I know a little shop I used to work at had a guy who bred local clowns and I was really impressed with his stuff. The regular ocellaris looked like wild clowns to me. I also see decent fish at my local Petco, which I believe get all their clowns from Sustainable Aquatics. I still see a lot of deformities in designer clown types and Darwin occellaris however. Of course some deformities are now considered desired traits these days, so I guess the issue has become quite muddy.

I've bred ocellaris since the 80s and percula since the mid 90s and ocellaris always had less misbars and deformation.
Even in the wild you see very few abnormally colored ocellaris, but abnormally colored percula are quite common, especially among those from the Solomons and PNG.

Unless you're breeding them there's no reason at all to wild caught and even then the argument for genetic diversity is kind of stretching things given how successful people have been with breeding for as a fair while now

I simply want to know where my fish come from and what they actually are, especially with those I plan to breed with. The issue with tank bred clowns is that people have been doing it for so long without documenting lineage.

Documenting the lineage down to the river section a fish was caught is something quite common among serious freshwater fish breeders. This is not just done for fun but rather for conservation purposes - quite a few freshwater fish species exist these days only in captivity and are extinct in the wild.

As a result of the randomness in clownfish breeding most tank bred clowns are some undefined mish-mash of different local strains or even species.